Mumsnet members get a 10% discount from Boden (including free returns and free delivery), The White Company, sweaty Betty, Luxury Family Hotels, JoJo Maman Bebe, Siblu, Blooming Marvellous, GLTC, Bump to 3 (the official online shop for Grobags) and more. Click here for more info Join mumsnet here.
Been on holiday for a week and the bin was emptied today. The combination of hot weather and dirty nappies (even though they were in nappy sacks) has caused the bin to stink and when I looked inside I found some maggots. I have just put some bleach and boiling water inside to kill the maggots but I cant get rid of the smell. Any ideas???
Oh there're horrible things aren't they! I think you've done what you should I would put it outside somewhere safe with tons of bleach and leave it for the day and then early evening give it a scrub with degerent.
just get some cheap disinfectant, pour in with hot water and leave the lid open, it'll soon clear. although greensleeves suggestion is probably the most effective
Our bins are only collected once a fortnight, and they writh with maggots all the time. It is DISGUSTING. I am currently on a writing campaign to get them to collect weekly.
We don't have a wheely bin, just a regular dustbin, and I haven't noticed maggots, but I do put an inch or two of cat litter in the bottom to absorb any leaks from the binbags - keeps smells down too.
Guess you'd have to replace it a lot if your bins get tipped up straight into the dustcart though.
Update - the bleach and hot water killed the maggots - hurrah!! I also got DH to pressure wash the wheelie bin this evening and its looking sparkly clean although still a bit smelly. Going to leave it overnight and hopefully the smell will go. I have to say though I am quite proud of how well I responded to the maggot situation - considering I normally run a mile at anything like that I kept calm and dealt with it myself!
cece, interetsing about your bin having maggots. Our bins are due to be emptied fortnightly, starting in March, and when i asked about nmaggots, and the possibilty of them being in the bins , espec in hot weather, i was told
"Don't be silly Mrs Saltire, the gestation period of a maggot is three weeks, hence the reason we can empty them safely on a 2 weeks basis"
Of course there will be maggots everywhere,anyway, because my bin is full to the brim every week, so i don't know where i'm going to put my excess rubbish.
God I hope the two weekly bin emptying doesnt catch on too much. I couldn't handle that. I might have to only pay half my council tax as a response. My wheelie bin is full to the top after 6 days.
Ours are emptied every two weeks. I have to give the bins a wide birth when I come in and out of the house, I am so phobic . It's disgusting really, a shoddy service.
I agree with recycling/different boxes for stuff, but only coming to empty bins once a fortnight is seriously taking the piss.
I live down a pretty country lane and the flytipping is bad enough already. If bins get emptied less, there will be even more folks coming to leave their crap down my lane coz its too far to drive to the dump.
Our bins are collected every two weeks (ordinary rubbish and recyclying alternate). Last summer there were many maggots (DD now having reusables seems to have helped). Council's suggestion was to double wrap any meat and to freeze left overs until rubbish was collected .
oh no - us too. We don't get a proper wheelie bin but have a small bucket with lid in the garden that we put the bagged-up dog poo in. It's infested! I'll have to chuck the whole thing, can't cope with cleaning it out.
ewwwwww we had maggots last week. I think the wheelie bin could have got up and walked for the amount of movement in there and spilling over the top ewwwwwww.
I made DH bleach it and put boiling water in there once the bin had been emptied. He also left it open for a day and also bleached again. Seems to have solved the problem... for now anyway!!!
Well, ref the bins being emptied 2 weekly. this is what i was told by Fife council (who else has such crap service)
"Due to new regualtions regarding landfill sites, we are obliged to REDUCE to amount of rubbish we put into landfill sites. In order to enable us to reduce the amount of rubbish, we will be emptying bins fortnightly"
I pointed out that they would in fact have the same amount of rubbish, just that they would be putting it into the landfills less often. However as Dpointed out, fife will only empty bins that have the lid shut. Even if its open less than 5 cms, the bin men open the bin, take the offending bag out and dump on the pavement. So DH reckons that if they do this in March when 2 weekly collections start, then there will be bags of rubbish lying around all ove rht eplace!
it is a crazy situation. here you can buy another bin for £80 (one off payment) so if you can afford the £80 you can effectively have the same service. crap councils. time to start leaving unwanted packaging at the supermarket?
i have a 2 weekly service aswell, which is bad, but recently i rang and complained about the hot weather making the bins smell, and they said that as i have 6 members in my household i can have another set of bins, which were delivered the next day!!
right, I'll try to sort my dog poo bin out now. Wish me luck... I'm going for the 'look away whilst doing it' approach. RETCH!
Don't want to leave it for dh to do - that seems a bit wimpish (tempting though!). Poor dh finds maggots just as gross as I do, I'm sure.
Aaargh ours is heaving too now...vile vile things. I feel sick!Does fly spray kill the maggots too does anyone know? Ugh!! I can barely open the lid to look.
This is largely due to a fortnightly collection too. Have just rung the council and they said to 'double bag' everything. The problem is, after two weeks of squashing everything in, we can't close the lid and if a bird or cat makes a hole in the rubbish bags, in go the flies.
We have had maggots too this weekend in our black bin. Our rubbish is collected every two weeks. I agree with recycling but wish we could have rubbish collected every week. We have used boiling water and then Jeyes fluid to clean out our bin and removed the offending sacks and rebagged them! YUK!!! I hate creepy crawlies. Any more suggestions?
argh. had the same problem myself just last week. because of industrial strike the rubbish did not get collected for two weeks and yes magots started coming out from the wheelie bin!!!
I could not even go near them!!
I had to wait another week before it was collected. (I had to spray something in it meanwhile).
I've used bleach and power washer but I think I;ll try the soda as well.
(I'd never have believed that I could end up discussing maggots in MN too. great!)
I seem to always get maggots in my bin during the summer months and absolutely hate having to get rid of them. However, I bought a really fab product online from http://www.bin-fresh.co.uk It's really easy to use - just put a wipe a day in your bin and it keeps the flies away and adds a nice, fresh smell to your bin at the same time - Try it!!
Who said maggots take weeks to hatch. Not in my experience.
I was 8 months pregnant, dh away, went to bed and left cat food down that had been out in the day, just a tiny bit left in the bowl and had been there for about 4 hours. Didnt even think to empty it. Came downstairs at about 4am to use the loo (have to walk through the kitchen) and I stop and think to myself - hold in I didnt have rice for my tea!! Yep, maggots hatched in the cat food and crawling all over the floor. Now I can actually see when they have been laid, and it can be as quick as an hour after I have out the food down in the summer.
I have also brought eggs from the grocer, put them straight in the fridge and when I opened the box the next day there were maggots on them. I presume it was dirt from the chickens bum or something
They are determined little buggers I'll give them that.
oh no i missed the wednesday brown bin collection i've just gone outside to let the dogs out and there's maggots dripping from the bin and theres a sea of maggots all over the patio!! there heading towards the back door helppppppp!!
thank to all for the above advice i'm now going to burn them all with boiling water i hope they hiss!!!
I used to know someone who did admin work in the bin dept of their local council and the council had just started a fortnightly collection
LOTS of people complained about maggots at first as they started the scheme in the summer.
the worst things for these wretched things are chicken carcasses (sp) and fish (YUK!!).
In theory if you bag all your food well and double wrap bones /meat waste etc the flies can't get in to lay their eggs - In theory!!
I have had a fortnightly collection for a while now and even though I do all this I am still finding maggots in my bin - their regularity is slowy curing my phobia though but the smell after 2 weeks is minging, I always worry that germs can be breathed in from my bin (can they???)
I personally put a whole bottle of bleach in my bin with about 3 kettles worth of boiling water and leave the lid open for a few hours. I then give it a good swill and it gets rid of the worst of it.
However i am considering getting a bin cleaner - they charge around £3.00 every 2 weeks.
As an aside all this bleaching etc can't be very good for the environment and isn't this why we are doing this fortnightly collection to encourage recycling and help the environment?
I got up yesterday morning went out on to patio and there was maggots every where coming from the bin I have re bagged the rubbish washed the bin out but tonight they are back in force my bin is not due to be emptyed for another 5 days and I cannot stand the maggots I am worried they might get in the house HELP HELP HELP
I had them dropping out of my bin once. I called the council and ranted down the phone and they came and took it away and left a shiny new one in it's place.
last night discovered a maggot rave going on round the top of my bin, blasted them with boiling water, but each time I went back to check more had appeared.I have spent more time with my maggot mates and kettle than I have my family this weekend !!!! I even dreamt about my bin last night, Sad !!!! I can't bring myself to pull out all the rubbish bags to rebag them and there is still 2 more days until rubbish collection.There will be more water than rubbish at this rate. I bleach and scrub my bin every 2 weeks so not sure what happened this time. Well kettles just boiled again so back to maggot attack, nice to know I'm not alone !!!
I found maggots crawling all over the inside of the lid yesterday, I thought I had killed them all but found another load this morning, have used 1 & 1/2 bottles of bleach today, problem is the bin is quite full and I am not going to pull all the bags out as can't bare to touch them (DH is a wimp also) the fortnightly bin collection is on tuesday and we are due to have our bin washed on the same day, cant wait, this is making me ill, and is going to cost me a fortune in bleach
I went outside to wave off my boyfriend and actually stood in the sea of maggots pouring out from my bin. I hadn't seen them and was bare foot. Compleatly freaked out!!!!!!!
Once i composed myself i had a mad hour quirting bleech on the path and kettles full of boiling water but, but they just don't seem to die!!!!!
Have moved the bin to the other side of the road & ten minutes later there was another sea forming! so have put something heavy on top to hold the lid shut. Bin is not collected for another 5 days. Not sure what else to do??
What will it be like when the maggots turn into flys? OMG i am really freaking out now!!!!!!
I am so glad to have found this thread as I thought it was only me!!!!! I have been using bleach and boiling water and have been told by the council that if the binmen can see any on the lid then they will not empty the bin when they come in 2 days!!!!! What on earth will we do then?????????? Off out with the bleach again, I am scared to pen the lid..Did anyone know if fly spray works? :-)
Me too.....I emptied a bag of soda crystals in the bin, read somewhere that salt killed the blighters, and that was the nearest thing that I had. Hoped it worked a bit like salt on slugs
I simply closed the lid and put something heavy on top. My partner checked today & they were all nearly dead. We're assuming the warm weather has killed them.
Hoorah, thank goodness for this thread, I found my black bin (fortnightly collection) had maggots in it yesterday, I sprayed it all with bug spray, but when I woke this morning and left for work, they are al crawing on top of it, so I boiled the kettle and poured that on it, I'd dreading going home and finding whats developed! have text dh to get an industrial bag of salt on his way home, I've also ready that hair spray works well at killing them, so when I get home I think me and dh will have to tackle it together with a mixture of salt boiling water bleach and hairspray!! surely one of those will work!!
Bins don't get emptied until friday either, as soon as its empty though we're pressure hosing it and bleaching it and anything else to get it clean again. urgh.
All was fine when I threw a nappy sack into the bin this morning. Two hours later, maggots dripping everywhere from the bin. 10 kettles of boiling water have made little difference so we've taken the drastic action of clingfilming our bin top to bottom to suffocate the little buggers. They're all over the patio and it stinks. Five days to go until collection day...whoopee!
We have recycling (plastic, cardboard, glass) one week. General waste the next, and always have maggots in the summer. 3 or 4 buckets of bleech & hot water usually does the trick. I do wish household waste was still collected weekly.
our food waste gets taken away weekly but there were still maggots in it the other week tons of them all writhing around, I nearly barfed
am taking head in sand approach dh said they were all gone when bins were emptied am firmly resolved not to look whenever I put anything in bin at least it's nearly winter
We have had fortnightly collections for ages and never run out of space in the bin and also never had maggots. bin did get full when binmen were striking because then didn't get emptied for a month.
I clean out my wheelie bin every time it is emptied, which helps (also reduces smell as it has to live quite close to my front door), but we get weekly collections in the summer here as it was such a big problem.
To kill maggots I use RAID fly spray. Works wonders.
We also have fortnightly collection and as I have three children age 2 and under I have a lot of nappies so we can never fit everything in.
I pleaded with council and said I would pay for another bin so we don't have to have bags of maggots sitting in the garden for DS1 to play with and they said you only get an extra bin if you have 6 or more people living in your house, so I need to have another baby or a lodger .
This is the first time we've had them by the way. Normally scrupulous about putting rubbish in the bin but a bag got left outside for a day before it went in there.
Nightmare! I found teeny weeny maggots under the rim of the cat bowl Believe me, the cat bowls are constantly washed aswell(cat food is sooooo attractive to small children for some reason) Some manky fly must have laid eggs under there and in literally a day, they have hatched into little maggots. Really really grim.
<<shudder>>
Cat bowl was duly flung in the garden and DH dealt with it while I did a strange toe curling, finger flicking, shuddering type dance!
When you say maggots - I've had little cocoon shaped brown things (eggs?) around the lid of my compost bin which is only collected once a fortnight - are they maggots or are they the stage before maggots? They don't move or anything. Anyway, I have only got them since I stopped bagging all kitchen waste in brown paper caddy liners, so needless to say I have immediately ordered a whole load more (after doing the bin with boiling water and Dettol).
My council say they do the fortnightly collections to encourage recylcing which is fair enough, but I think if it is really for recycling and not just cost cutting they should take weekly green bin collections (compostable waste) and weekly bottle/plastics/paper recycling collections but keep the non recyclable wheelie bins fortnightly. It would encourage people to sort their waste more and would prevent smells and maggots in the summer.
Me too!! Have used 2 bottles of bleach today and now they are marching across the drive and up to the front door, yuk yuk yuk. My bin is cleaned by a company every month, and was done 11 days ago everything is bagged I feel so dirty.
I just had hundreds of em marching up my path n under my back door making an assault on the kitchen floor!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Boiling water stopped em in their tracks as did the broom, but in the end I resorted to pickin them up and squashing them. my back garden looks like a maggot masacre, but they keep squirming back to life!!!!!!!! So much for having 2 teenage sons who ran away squealing!!!!
I HAAATE them and flies too. 
. It's disgusting really, a shoddy service. 
. 
Does fly spray kill the maggots too does anyone know? Ugh!! I can barely open the lid to look.
